Marlon’s World

http://theworldaccordingtomarlon.blogspot.com

According to the blog stats, this is my 60th blogpost in Friendster (hurray!) and I’m glad that I’m writing about something that I’ve loved ever since. Back when my Spanish was just a motley assortment of "Hola! Que tal?", I chanced upon an independent Spanish rock group in Televisión Española (TVE) over Philippine cable TV. I had no idea what they’re singing, but their melody was quite catchy and their fashion, well, bordering on the psychedelic, to say the least.   

Being the obsessive-compulsive that I was, I began searching for the group in the Internet, a short line from the one song I heard on TVE as my only clue (Porque siempre despiertos quisimos soñar). It turns out that the title of the song was Diferentes and the band’s name, Ellos (meaning, They in english, Sila in Filipino), with mainmen Guille Mostaza on vocals and guitar, and Santi Capote on guitar. (BTW, if you know Spanish, do read their bios in the official website. Very… interesting).   

To be honest, I didn’t exactly know why I like the group at that point. One could say that I go for the daring ones, those who don’t sound like any other group in the market. True, Ellos’ songs can be formulaic and influences from other acts could be heard in their melodies, but for them to be able to fuse all those elements to make create a coherent repertoire replete with subliminal meanings in a seemingly pop packaging is in itself an achievement.

One could also argue that during a time when the airwaves were polluted with redundant American sounds from the same artists whose main goal was to sell, any independent performance from any country other than the US was a welcome respite amid the drab and dreary music scene. Musicians need to eat, that’s a given, but when one succumbs to the temptation of going always with the flow, he risks his originality and loses in the process the very essence of this being an artist. Ellos, from where I am at, seem to understand this philosophy and have always gambled with the avant-garde and the ambivalent.            

Fuese lo que fuera la razón, fue en ese momento cuando me convertí en fan del grupo y a pesar de los límites que en aquel entonces tenía (si eres hispanohablante pero no eres Thalía, Ricky Martin, Jennifer López o Shakira, no puedes vender ni un solo disco en Filipinas, así que por defecto no se vendían discos de Ellos), conseguí hacerme con su primer disco, gracias a la imprescindible ayuda de un primo de mi papá que vive en California. Años después, ya en Valladolid con una beca, uno de los primeros discos que me compré era el segundo álbum del grupo, el cual tuve que pedir en la página web de Subterfuge.

Imagináos, pues, la sensanción que tenía cuando me enteré de que Ellos iban a Valladolid para un concierto de rock. Fue el 18 de mayo, un viernes, y toda mi pandilla me parecía o bien agotada por haber currado todo el día, o bien indiferente por tener otro concierto "latino" que ver el día siguiente, o bien mosqueda porque yo llevo casi toda la semana pidiéndoles que viniesen conmigo al concierto.

Al final, fuí yo solo, pero a mí no me no importaba pues me topé con un público igual de loco por Ellos y pasamos una noche cantando los hits del grupo. Canté (se puede oírlo en los vídeos aquí colgados y quizás hay que tapar los oídos, jeje), bailé, saqué fotos… en fin, hay que ser fan para entenderlo. Y yo sí que lo soy.    

I’m going back to the Philippines very soon, but let it be said that I’m one lucky bastard for having been able to catch this group before I go. Hmmm…, is there any Asian record label interested to sign ‘em up? Just wondering out loud.

VIDEO SAMPLERS (Valladolidindie 2007): Diferentes, Dicen que te vas

Dear Fr. Ed…

Congratulations for winning the elections in Pampanga. Congratulations for giving the kabalens someone to trust. And congratulations for showing us that governance is a two-way street, that when people believe in what’s good and what’s just, anything could be achieved.

You are called now to serve in a different apostolate. It’s gonna be tough, what with all the problems that you have to solve and the people you have to deal with. But like when you first received your vows, remember always that THOU ART PETER and you are chosen to serve your flock.

Don’t let your provincemates down. And may you inspire the entire country to change what needed to be changed.

I am assuming that most people have already heard something about the shooting rampage that South Korean Cho Seung-Hui did in the Virginia Tech University in the US. It’s been THE news these past few days and I cannot help but marvel at how American media is spinning the story, as if the Korean guy (may he rest in peace) is the Evil Incarnate.

From interviewing his former roommates who described him as "weird," to talking to his teacher who thought of him "distant," to analyzing his "disturbing" plays, American media has done everything to caricature the fallen twenty-something as the villain of a soap opera of epic proportions. Cho’s profile has been scrutinized to the smallest detail, as if his green card would provide any clue on what the news reports labelled "a student-turned-sociopath."

An FBI agent who was asked what reasons Cho probably had for reacting the way he did, replied that knowing the cause was not important anymore since people like Cho — according to him — are led to commit such acts of violence after going through a series of difficult events in the past. Never mind that Cho’s letter spoke of the perpetual rich-versus-poor plot. He went on a killing spree and he’s a demented jerk.

From where I am standing, the whole story the media is trying to feed us has been exasperating, and even idiotic. While I do not wish to glorify Cho Seung-Hui, I neither would want to put the entire blame on him. All those people who were interviewed, those who said they have had a brush with Cho as a teacher or as a roommate or as a classmate, now assess the South Korean from hindsight. He’s always aloof, they said. He’s always strange.

But I ask now: did they even bother to look at the world from Cho’s perspective? Those who say that they have detected that something was going on with Cho, did they ever take any step to reach out to him? By reaching out I mean not just reporting him to the counseling office or saying an ephemeral hello, but instead trying to talk to him as a friend, as an equal. Did they even regard Cho as one of them, and not just an Asian who came to America to study English?

Two pieces of information struck me as odd. First, at the start of the reporting, no one seemed to know who the shooter was. Then, when it was reported that the he was Asian, everyone readily thought of Cho Seung-Hui as the perfect candidate that fits the profile.

This is how crass, unfeeling and anomic we have become. We identify people by the faults they make and not by their virtues. It is a tragedy of our times that we are taught to classify people, to look for divisions, to search for differences, to make sense of our frailties as human beings by analizing our defects. But it is even more tragic that by doing so, we come to segregate people who only wanted to belong and turn them to our own personal monsters whom we fear, loathe and do not care to understand at all.

Peace be to all the souls claimed by the tragedy. And peace be to Cho.          

Word is out that the Chinese government is requiring the people of Beijing to learn more English and improve the translation of public signs in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. An interesting move, really, considering that learning a new language in itself is already a difficult task. Multiply this scenario by a billion times and you’d understand the case of China, I’d suppose.

Nonetheless, the move could be channeled to the advantage of the Philippines, a proudly, self-proclaimed English-speaking nation in that part of Asia. For one, Philippine English is very accessible to beginners, as it does away with the elements that usually make English-language learning a nightmare among Asians (the British accent, the American twang, etc.) Also, it cannot be denied that learning English with a Filipino or in the Philippines is much cheaper than learning it in the US, Britain or Australia.

The question of efficiency, however, remains. That is, are Filipinos really competitive in teaching the language to non-English speakers? Do we know the English that other people want to learn? I have been thinking over these questions here in Spain because I have to admit that after two years of living with Spanish as my main tool for communication, my English has deteriorated significantly (16 vowels, be gone!). And to think that I used to work as a teacher of English! Added to this is fact that the Spaniards usually need to learn British English and, whether you like it or not, there are very different elements in these two varieties. Remember this Will and Grace episode?        

But over and above these superficial requirements, do we *really* know our English? And do we apply what we know whenever we have to use the language? Take some of these examples from the Friendster profile and blog of a Filipino teacher of English (who s/he was, I would not reveal):

• Struggle is just a butter of bread (wrong lexicalized expression),
• Amass your goals, then utilize it (wrong pronoun referent),
• People said, I’m intelligent and smart but, that’s just the outside characteristics of being me- based from my achievements (quoted speech and preposition use, among other things)
• We should have" esprit de corps" not "coup d’ etat". (I’ll put this one up as a bonus), ETC.

And the piece de resistance? In the "About Me" part, the author wrote that s/he is "Sedate, Thoughtful, Eloquent, Pleasant, Heedful, Amicable, Nifty, Innocuous, Extreme, Jovial, Inquisitive, Lively, Liable." Obviously, for the trained eye, the errors have just jumped out of the page.

Sedate, though it may mean calm and collected, gives the impression that the author was in previous state of shock and with the help of a tranquilizer, has achieved this new state of serenity. Innocuous, as far as I know, is better used in reference to things and not to people. After all, why proclaim that you’re harmless when in theory, all people should be like that? Extreme is vague and, when taken in the context of sports, can even mean dangerous. My personal favorite is liable, or for mortals like you and me, guilty. Did the author just admit that s/he is guilty? Of what, then?

Teaching English, or any language for that matter, does not depend on the amount of profound words one knows. Nay, it doesn’t even depend on the accent that one manages to produce. Remember that the main goal of learning a new language is to be able to communicate effectively with a native speaker.

The same applies to teaching language. If one goes as far as stretching the lexicon to lengths and heights so horrible that the resulting text becomes erroneous, probably there is a serious need to review and revive the curriculum and re-evaluate the performance of the teacher. Better yet and for the purposes of blogging, as the blogosphere is extremely far-reaching, why not try to write in the language that writer truly has mastered? After all, Filipino sounds as divine as any other language.

I wanted to write something substantial or something light or something amusing but I can’t. I have so many things running through my head and I can’t seem to sort them out into a meaningful, tangible form.

For one, I’m very disgusted with Philippine politics. No matter how one deodorizes it, it simply stinks. What we have now are politicians who would be so ready to jump to the other camp sans ideological and program-based reasons for doing so because their former allies chose other people for their lineup, politicians who used to be actors or sportsmen and who now wade through political mud simply because they could muster enough votes for the entire group, and politicians who have legitimate platforms and objectives who are marginalized, harassed, subjected to all forms of maltreatment and pitted against shoo-ins who strangely enough have the same surname or monicker. If this is not enough to make you puke, just scan the news on political groups in the provinces that belong to the same party but are divided among themselves because everyone wants to be the leader. If one needs a title to help people, he should not be voted for public office.

Then of course, there are more personal stuffs. The long process of disengagement has begun for me. I’m not seeing friends in Valladolid who are going back to their countries after their studies in Spain. I know it would happen and probably, I should not be sad nor surprised at all. But I just can’t help it. You think at the back of your mind that it’s gonna be the last time you’ll see them, no matter how many e-mail addresses and phone numbers and promises of visiting each other’s country are exchanged.

The same is true with Filipino friends. Back home, I’ve received word that friends have settled down, that they have had children, that they have migrated to another country. I feel that I’ve been kept out of it all. Could I still relate to their stories once I come home? Here in Spain, I feel that friends have been living their own lives, lives without me in them. I know that it’s normal and that everyone has the right to choose how to live his life, but it’s just sad to feel that people are drifting away slowly.

Some thoughts. Not coherent at all. Broken promises, unrequited love, unshared regrets, insecurities and anger unvented, and an envy that cuts to the very core of one’s being.   

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This has been a week of deaths. Internationally, of course, former Playboy playmate and pop culture icon Anna Nicole Smith collapsed and died in her Florida hotel. In Spain, the news that graced all dailies yesterday was the apparent suicide of Érika Ortiz Rocasolano, the younger sister of Crown Princess Letizia.

In my dorm, death came to a loved one of one of the staff members and everyone — from the dorm manager to the beadles — were visibly shocked. And in Amsterdam where I stayed for three days, I was moved to tears by Vincent Van Gogh’s last painting after associating the image with a fragment of his letter sent to his brother Theo.

Death has really been the great equalizer. No matter how rich we are, or how successful we have become, we are all bound to die one day. It’s hard to accept it no matter what anybody says, especially since death at its very core is a separation, a going-away, an occasion to say farewell.

As a child, my first encounter with death was when our pet canary died. I sobbed for hours and no amount of chocolate milk was enough to console me. Daddy then dropped the bomb: everyone will eventually die. That didn’t help at all. I felt numb all over, then incomprehension began to sink in. For a 6-year-old, knowing that his teacher whom he admired, or his playmate who ate crayons, or the very person who revealed to him the great law of life would also have to die one day is simply just unfair.

But I remember now what an author, Alan Lightman, wrote in his book Einstein’s Dreams. He said that had everything been immortal and death, inexistent, life itself would be meaningless and futile for all of us would just live perpetually without any urgency to do good, to have new experiences, to know more people, to live life to its fullest.

It is only when an end so powerful and so unpredictable such as death comes into the picture that living acquires a tangible form. We live a life with a purpose, whatever it may be, since we know that we don’t have enough time to do all the things we want to do.

I close by remembering all those who died and the loved ones they left behind who now mourn their loss. There are many stories that perhaps would never be told, or many laughters that perhaps would never be heard, or many embraces that would never be felt.

Possibly, we from the outside would never fully comprehend the value of the relationships you shared with these people. But, in the end, the fact that we are all walking toward the same finish line is the single most moving statement that says that we, too, understand what it is to say goodbye.

En memoriam…

It is when the night falls that loneliness becomes more unbearable. After all the laughter that I’m expected to churn out, the witticisms that are required of me, the smiles and the occasional blushes that have in time been obligatory, I end up dark, lonely and miserable in front of my desk and my stack of books that tell all stories but mine. No one sees this. No one sees how I suffer. The visage is always deceiving, for even I lure myself to thinking that everything is okay.

Solitude can be magnificent as it leads me to think things over. But it is also depressing – nay, it’s probably even fatal – whether when I sit down in a quiet nook or when I converse with a variety of people. I may appear cheerful, aggressive, loud or pensive, but the emptiness is unbelievable: it is as if life passes in front of me in slow motion, and people just walk by without taking notice. Everyone’s playing the same game. Speed is ironically vital; there’s no turning back.

The romantics have always painted how the life of the young bourgeois is. Those from the outside think that it’s all flak. No, it’s not. When you’re struggling to fit in and the only way to do so is to drink the same poison as they are drinking, or wear the same clothes as they are wearing, or act in the same way as they are acting, or desire in the same things they are desiring, you end up pitying yourself, questioning if there’s anyone who thinks otherwise, hoping that people finally take a second look without preconceptions or rejection or lies.

It is thus that I have come to realize how absurd life is. I would like to believe that optimism still works, but the truth is, everything we do is bound to be futile. I always am sad whenever I meet new acquaintances who, after a few hours, would be forever gone. It’s true. No matter how many “Catch you later” or “See you soon” I say, I somehow know that it will be the last time I see them. It’s the irony of meeting new people. We all want to hold on to them, we all want them to linger. We want to spend silent minutes and noisy hours with them, as if every moment were perpetually the first. But we simply just can’t. We move on. We forget. We let go. We mix up all those faces and features and voices in a cloudy and putrid mass of recollections. We go back to being strangers.

Then I begin thinking about all my chatmates. Whether I am in my legitimate identity or an assumed one, I always feel connected to whoever is online, never mind that everything is absurdly virtual and ephemeral. I wanted to meet a chatmate from Italy or from Argentina, or a “fan” who said that an article I wrote was excellent, but I just know I can’t. They are not interested to meet me, I’m sure. They are interested in the identity I have created for them. And I cannot begin to imagine how it would be when the day comes that I wouldn’t be able to access my Messenger, lose my password, or meet an untimely death without being able to say goodbye or ask if those many unnamed virtual personas had really loved me. I would just be a registered concept, an idea that was too good to last.

Material things provide for temporary solace. Good food. Nice clothes. A night in a pub. A bottle of rum. But when I come home, wasted, sweaty and drunk, loneliness begins to well from within. It is thus that I come to know that the life I have aspired to have for so long is but an excuse to live and that in the process of working for that ideal, I have committed myself to not being at all free.

I gathered somewhere from the Internet a good quote: it is only when you stop playing that you begin winning the game. This is me right now. I want to stop playing, get out of the court and be the spectator.

I was feeling down the past week (my monthly bout with depression) when this song came out from my mind’s deepest id. Catchy and very feel good. I hope it inspires all of you, guys!

There was a time when I lived my life
Thinking only of the things that would bring me down
And all the while what I didn’t know
Is that I never learned to take the time to look around
There’s a little good in everyone
And sometimes it takes a little work to see the sun
If you try you may find your life has just begun
Don’t you run
Don’t you run

If you’re feeling lost
If you wanna be free
If you feel like your world is tearing up at the seams
Remember there’s light
If you wait till the dawn
You may walk through the clouds
But to carry on
You’ve got to follow the sun

Listen, baby
This world may be crazy
Sometimes you’ll feel like losing the game
But there’s always a reason to keep on believing
Everyone is not the same
(But if you appreciate the things you have today
You will find the way)

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope this year would be better than the last and as I have always said, I wish everyone lotsa love, happiness, health and prosperity. Life is short and at times absurd, so must live it as best as we could.

That said, I’d like to post a blog entry on how my New Year’s eve has been. It was in every sense unforgettable, partly because of the fun, and partly because of the post-midnight hassles. I spent New Year in Madrid with a group of friends from Valladolid: Luisa, a Filipina who is studying the same Master I did last year; Angelo, a Brazilian physics student; his girlfriend Celia, a psychologist; and Joanna, a Bulgarian classmate of Luisa. It was the first time for me to spend the Nochevieja in any capital city, since in the Philippines, it’s customary to be with your family on this evening. Besides, when everything smells of gunpowder, you wouldn’t want to be caught in Manila and its horrendous traffic.      

So we arrived around 11:30 AM in Madrid from Valladolid onboard the intercity train. The Spanish capital comes to life in the evening, so our morning was spent visiting the historical places, like the Royal Palace. Well, yeah, what’s left of the Palace after we blocked it out of the cam focus. 

After we exhausted ourselves and drank kegs of coffee, we decided to meet up with people: Juan, a Colombian engineering student from Valladolid who came to Madrid posthaste after a week of vacation in Belgium, and Joanna’s friend Ana who came with her brother Niko. We ate dinner afterwards. And joked about sacred cows falling down from the sky. And took pictures.

The next logical step was to go to the Puerta del Sol to secure our places for the midnight countdown. Because of the tight security (the main international airport of Madrid, Barajas, was bombed the day before), the security was very tight. No glass bottles were allowed in the plaza, so we had to drink our champagne before going in.

Well, the Puerta del Sol has always been the place to eat the traditional a grape of luck for each of the 12 seconds before the stroke of midnight. (We came prepared with canned grapes in disposable cans especially packed  for this event.) Given such reputation, it’s not strange to find all kinds of people. These English and Dutch guys in the next pic, for example. We also met a group of Mexican students who are studying in Madrid. They were able to bring their wine in since they had brought it in sheepskin containers. Nice.

So it struck midnight, and we all went berserk. There’s something so magical about New Years. I mean, after all bad things that happened and would happen, that one unique point of celebration and fun with friends and family still fills anyone with joy and hope.

That was the happy part. The sad part of my New Year’s eve happened about 12:10, just when everyone was ready to party. A man, a gypsy judging from his looks, suddenly went down as if to clean my shoes. Of course, I got surprised and told him there’s no need to worry in case he had stepped on my foot. It turns out it’s his modus operandi. In a blink of an eye, his friend got my wallet out of my front pocket.

My blood pressure rose at that point. I was angry, then worried, then sad, then stressed out. It was a good thing Luisa was with me because I would have collapsed. The whole story is shitty and to make it short, I managed to blocked my two Mastercards about an hour after the robbery. No thanks, though, to the Madrid police on Gran Via who did nothing but procrastinate and tell me to wait until morning for the blotter.

I was spent. I wasn’t so worried about money since I only had five euros in cash and the cards were blocked immediately. I wasn’t so worried about my student visa card, since I would get the new one within two weeks in Valladolid. The old one is expired. I was more worried about all the IDs. Securing IDs in Spain is very difficult because of the all the fees and papers that people ask for. Besides, the mere thought that after travelling in many places, I was robbed in the city that I have known from the very start. It’s insane.

But fate is mysterious sometimes. Just when I was ready to call it quits, the police located me in my hostel and told me that I could pick up my wallet and that all the IDs were there. It was found in the outskirts of Madrid, in a barrio known as Vallecas, about 15 kilometers from the city center.       

That pretty much sums up my eventful New Year celebration in Madrid. We got home at 8:30 PM in Valladolid. I ate turrones, met Tyler, an American guy from New Mexico, and took more pictures in which I looked like a beached whale.